Aerial Arts

Come fly with us – you can get airborne in all manner of ways. Warning: aerial arts are highly addictive!

Everyone can learn a trick or two in the first lesson of most classes and don’t worry, safety lines and harnesses are used where appropriate! We run regular Scratch Nights for budding performers who want to show their works in progress to family and friends.

Our instructors are trained to develop your skills no matter what your age or ability may be, from pro performer to absolute beginner. Do it whatever way feels comfortable – book one class at a time, try a pick & mix approach, or heck, why not sign up for a custom programme?! If you’re into it, you can purchase an Aerial Pack which you use when you choose to book into whatever you fancy – it comes at a reduced price.

These classes are for adults and existing Youth Circus students aged 13+ who wish to specialise in a specific discipline and have been signed off by their Youth Circus instructors. Youth Circus is for anyone aged 7-18. Classes are booked one term at a time and cover a multitude of circus disciplines to give you a broad range of skills and allow you to discover where your talents lie.

• Flying trapeze: one of the highest thrill-per-second activities in circus. From taking off the platform to letting go of the trapeze bar to performing your trick then finding the catcher in the air, it’s a white-knuckle ride. And the best thing is that it’s actually not that hard from the get-go. Most people can perform a trick and be caught in the first lesson – using safety lines and harnesses, of course!
• Static trapeze: the classic circus art is just about you, the trapeze bar and your dreams. Well, and your teacher too! On the trapeze which is stable in the sense that you don’t swing across the room on it like you would in fly, you can learn one trick at a time, build that up to a series and turn it into a performance if you want.
• Doubles trapeze: one trapeze, where two people become one by gripping hand-to-hand, hand-to-feet and even feet-to-feet as your moves flow over and under the bar, and on the ropes.
• Bungee trapeze: static trapeze on bungee ropes, what’s not to love? Use the bounce to drive momentum and spin just for the heck of it, or to radically increase your trick repertoire.
• Dance trapeze: instead of the bar hanging from two horizontal ropes, it’s hung from a single point so the ropes form an inverted V-shape. Rather than being about impressive acrobatic tricks, the emphasis is on artistically choreographed movements.
• Hoop: performing tricks inside, outside, on top of and below a big hoop suspended from the ceiling is both similar and different to trapeze. There’s a whole range of ways to use the hoop for stunning effects.
• Silks: who doesn’t enjoy the sensational sight of acrobats spinning, twisting and tumbling from great heights on these long loops of fabric? First you learn to climb, then you learn tricks close to the ground, then you become an expert in tying yourself in spectacular knots!
• Rope: many of the tricks on silks can be transplanted on to a rope, and more can be created uniquely for this art. It all depends how you want to express yourself.
• Spanish web: a different take on rope! Here, an assistant on the ground provides rotational push so that you are performing tricks while moving through the air in a circular motion.
• Cradle: similar tricks to doubles trapeze, but with bigger, stronger and different moves. You have a base who is hanging from a strong steel structure (the cradle) five metres high, and a flyer who performs tricks by gripping the base’s hands and swinging back and forth to build momentum for the tricks, or by leaping off the cradle while the base keeps a grip.
• Aerial harness: often this is the skill that makes movie and theatre stunts look exciting.
• Fly pole: Chinese pole that flies, a rubber coated pole for acrobatics.

• Date: January 2022